Mixin' it up without Photoshop

2 Apr 2012

Mixin' it up without Photoshop - How to create layered photographs without using Photoshop

Trying to avoid the work that needed to be done in the real non-photographic world, I found this fun way to take one photo that is a mix of several photos I had taken before.

Inspiration hit me, when I was scrolling my photos on my laptop screen. Basically I was bored and kept scrolling really fast even though there were only a couple of photos in that album. This fast forwarding created some interesting images and I thought about how I could capture them. I realized if I set my camera to a long enough exposure I could interlayer the photos by taking a photograph of the screen thus creating a totally new image. I really enjoy experimenting with the exposure settings of my camera and I am always looking for new ways to do that. I found the results quite interesting and had a lot of fun experimenting with it. So I decided to share this with you.

So this is how to do it:

1. Choose the photos you want to mix.

2. Put them into the same folder/iPhoto album.

3. Dim the lights. (If there is too much light it won't work with the longer exposure that is needed. You don't want to just shoot the photo you have already taken...)

4. Scroll the photos real fast. (I just kept my finger on the right arrow key. You can also alternate the directions. Whatever works for you.)

5. Try out what kind of exposure works for you (I used something like 1/5 but I guess it depends how fast you scroll and how the lighting conditions are)

6. Have fun and experiment

p.s. I am not a native speaker, so please excuse any mistakes and strange expressions I might have used